For the first time, astronomers have been able to measure the tangled mess of magnetism surrounding a very young, 10,000 year-old star, providing an insight to how magnetism may affect a baby star's protoplanetary disk growth - and therefore its potential planetary system - by deflecting material away from, or funneling it into the hungry star.

The observations, made by the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, have also shown that millimeter- to centimeter-sized particles are rapidly forming in the dusty envelope surrounding the star, providing an insight to the particle-formation processes in early stellar processes. It is believed that these particles go on to eventually form asteroids and planets.

The researchers zoomed in on one of a pair of protostars located around 750 light-years away in the constellation Perseus and recorded the polarization of the radio waves generated by the environment surrounding the star, called NGC1333 IRAS 4A. The polarization of the emissions provides information about the magnetic configuration of the stellar material. The radio waves are being generated by mainly dust falling onto the hot protoplanetary disk.

Some material in the disk falls into the star, dragging the magnetic field with it, possibly interfering with stellar accretion.

"The alignment of magnetic fields in this region near young stars is very important to the development of the disks that orbit them," said Leslie Looney, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Depending on its alignment, the magnetic field can either hinder the growth of the disk or help funnel material onto the disk, allowing it to grow."

"Our VLA observations are showing us this region, where the change in shape of the magnetic field is taking place," added Erin Cox, also of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Understanding the magnetic configuration close to a young star is critical to our understanding of stellar evolution and may even help us understand how rapidly planets may be spawned by a star's protoplanetary disk. This knowledge could then be used to forma better picture as to how our solar system took shape shortly after the sun sparked to life.

To celebrate its 23rd year in space, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped this view of the famous Horsehead nebula in infrared light. Usually obscured by the thick clouds of dust and gas, baby stars can be seen cocooned inside this stellar nursery. For the last 23 years, Hubble has been looking deep into the Cosmos returning over a million observations of nebular such as this, but also planets, exoplanets, galaxies and clusters of galaxies. The mission is a testament to the the human spirit to want to explore and discover. Here are some of our favorite recent observations to come from the veteran mission.

Light from an ancient galaxy 10 billion light-years away has been bent and magnified by the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. Without the help of this lensing effect, the distant galaxy would be extremely faint.

This is 30 Doradus, deep inside the Tarantula Nebula, located over 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. 30 Doradus is an intense star-forming region where millions of baby stars are birthed inside the thick clouds of dust and gas.

NGC 3314 is actually two galaxies overlapping. They’re not colliding – as they are separated by tens of millions of light-years – but from our perspective, the pair appears to be in a weird cosmic dance.

Arp 116 consists of a very odd galactic couple. M60 is the huge elliptical galaxy to the left and NGC 4647 is the small spiral galaxy to the right. M60 is famous for containing a gargantuan supermassive black hole in its core weighing in at 4.5 billion solar masses.

With help from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, Hubble has observed the awesome power of the supermassive black hole in the core of elliptical galaxy Hercules A. Long jets of gas are being blasted deep into space as the active black hole churns away inside the galaxy’s nucleus.

The striking Sharpless 2-106 star-forming region is approximately 2,000 light-years from Earth and has a rather beautiful appearance. The dust and gas of the stellar nursery has created a nebula that looks like a ‘snow angel.’

NGC 922 is a spiral galaxy with a difference. Over 300 million years ago, a smaller galaxy (called 2MASXI J0224301-244443) careened through the center of its disk causing a galactic-scale smash-up, blasting out the other side. This massive disruption generated waves of gravitational energy, triggering pockets of new star formation – highlighted by the pink nebulae encircling the galaxy.

Four hundred years ago a star exploded as a type 1a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) some 170,000 light-years from Earth. This is what was left behind. The beautiful ring-like structure of supernova remnant (SNR) 0509-67.5 is highlighted by Hubble and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatory observations. The X-ray data (blue/green hues) are caused by the shockwave of the supernova heating ambient gases.

The intricate wisps of thin gas (billions of times less dense than smoke in our atmosphere) from Herbig-Haro 110 are captured in this stunning Hubble observation. Herbig-Haro objects are young stars in the throes of adolescence, blasting jets of gas from their poles.

Contained within an area a fraction of the diameter of the moon, astronomers counted thousands of galaxies in the deepest observation ever made by Hubble. Combining 10 years of Hubble observations, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) has picked out galaxies that were forming when the Universe was a fraction of the age it is now.